THE FARMSTEAD

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Where No Man Has Gone Before!

I am trying to keep this blog non-political and non-judgmental, but something I heard this morning really got the gears between my ears going and I feel I must share.

I woke up at 6am to my wonderful, trusty Chihuahua alarm and as I entered the kitchen, I found Big Guy pouring me a cup of OJ. Then I slipped on my sloggers, (rubber garden slippers for those of you who aren't garden savvy) and took out my furry alarm to potty. When I finally joined Big Guy in the family room, we enjoyed our coffee while watching the morning news.

The news seemed to be all about the Health Care issue, of which I have an opinion just as I'm sure many if not all of you reading this have as well. I promise not to bring you down by ranting about mine, but something one of the guest commentators said about free food for everyone reminded me of thoughts I once had as a child.

When I was about 10 years old, (keep in mind I had just heard a Miss America contestant say she wanted peace and love for the whole world), I thought how wonderful it would be if everyone could live in a nice home, have a dappled pony and eat chocolate pudding with candy sprinkles for breakfast every morning.

In other words, I envisioned a perfect world, (and not just because of my OCD), where every living quarters looked the same, every person wore the same outfit and all we had to do was push a button to be automatically served any kind of food we wanted. Kind of like Star Trek!

My thought was, if everything that we needed to survive was automatically provided for us, then no one would be unhappy, no one would starve and no one would need to be mean or nasty. Yes, people had been mean and nasty to me and I'll bet they were to you too!

I lived in one of the smallest and oldest homes in town and there were quite a few homes like mine sprinkled throughout, but there were also some really nice, newer and much larger homes as well. I spent days dreaming about and drawing pictures of my ideal home; a home where everyone had their own bedroom and bathroom so they wouldn't need to share or worry if the hot water was gone after waiting for a turn in the bathtub. I had never actually been in a home that had more than one bathroom, but had heard they existed.

I knew our old Betsy Lou was not a great looking car but it got us safely from point A to point B. It didn't have air-conditioning and I really wanted a car that had air-conditioning like my friend's did. Dreams of a brand new 1970, hot pink-flocked Mach 1 Mustang with a front air scoop and rumbling V-8, hadn't happened yet.

I also knew that most of my clothes and toys were second hand-hand-me-downs or bought as birthday and Christmas gifts from rich relatives. The Sears "Dream" Catalog was exactly that; a dream!

We always had great food to eat though. My grandma made the best meals of any that I had ever eaten. No matter where we went to eat on Mother's Day, which was just about the only day of the year we didn't eat at home, there wasn't one place that cooked food as good as my grandma. I thought how wonderful it could be if I could just share her cooking with the whole world; if every day could be Sunday Dinner at grandma's house; if her incredible home-made chocolate cake or apple pie could just magically appear with the push of a button.

I know that there are still people, whole communities of people, who don't have hot water much less a bath tub to put it in, but it's the culture they live in and they have lived that way for centuries.

I know that there are people who don't own nor have they ever owned a vehicle much less one with air-conditioning; my friend in Holland for one, who rides a bicycle or takes the public transit.

As for ponies, I'm sure there are plenty of people who own computers who have never even seen a live pony.

And as for "perfect houses", I couldn't even tell you what a perfect house consists of today since a person's home is the nest that they feather and everyone feather's there's differently.

Of course there was never a way until Facebook and Pinterest that I could clone my grandma's cooking or at least come close to making it possible to share it with the whole world!

But this I know for certain...Star Trek is not real.

For some of you Trekkies this may be hard to swallow but it really is just a TV show from the 60's. Think about it; everyone has these perfect bodies with outfits that all look the same, they all sleep in the same little cabin's with very little personal effects and they all work for the United Federation of Planets. They all get to push buttons for any thing they need and no one ever has to worry about medical care because Dr. McCoy can laser you and make you instantly healthy.

The problem with this is where does all of their stuff come from and who is paying for it?

Where do the goods, building materials, etc. come from and who does all of the work gathering these things, building these things and operating them? Do they just collect a lot of weird space rocks that are valuable to Ferengi and then trade for stuff? Or maybe they have robots do everything but somebody had to build the robots at least until the robots could start building themselves and that's a scary plot to a really good movie starring Will Smith.

On Star Trek the incentive for a job well done always means "Vacation" time on some exotic planet with half naked but extremely perfect looking people who cater to your every need. No one ever buys anything but sometimes they go exploring and find some strange artifact to take back to the ship. Then the artifact ends up being a scary alien and invading and, well it just would never work. We have to be paid for a job and we have to be able to buy things with our earnings. And we all must do this!

Why you ask? Why must we all work and be paid and then spend what we are paid to get what we want, desire, choose, need or just have to have?

Because if these things are just given to us, we will have no appreciation for them. And what incentive would there be for those who create, serve, build, nurse, doctor, teach, etc., if the reward was the same every time for everyone? That sounds more to me like the "Collective" and that's one scary Borg Queen who like it or not is insisting that you will be assimilated because resistance is futile!

Free food for everyone! I don't know about you, but I don't want to be stuck on a star ship going "Where No Man Has Gone Before"!